Charlotte
Collins Reed
Christ
Church Episcopal
December
10, 2017
Advent
2B
From the time I was a little girl, the mountains
of Western North Carolina have been one of my favorite places on earth. My grandparents had a summer home in the
mountains when I was young, and moved there permanently once they retired. Close to three decades worth of Thanksgivings
were spent there, along with visits in spring and summer, and Don’s first
teaching position was at a university nearby.
Regardless of the season, the mountains are breathtakingly
beautiful. In the mid-winter, the
mountains are laced with snow, which looks pure and clean at least from the
distance. In the spring, when the leaves
return, the mountains are bursting with new life. In the summer, when the rest of the world is
hot and humid, the mountains are cool and the nights are so quiet you can
almost reach out and touch the stars above you or hear the train pass through
the valley below. And in the fall, the
leaves turn brilliant red and it looks as if the mountains are on fire with
color. The season does not matter. The
mountains always bear witness to the glory of God.
Because I am so in love with these mountains, I
find Isaiah’s words this morning quite baffling. Why would God want every high mountain to be
made low and every valley filled up?
Does God really want all creation to be flat like Kansas? Why would God have made the mountains in the
first place if they were going to need to be leveled? And why do we hear these words on the second
Sunday of Advent?
One inevitable sight when we drove through the
mountains was the car pulled off to the side with a flat tire, a steaming
engine, no gas, or worse. I am reminded
that the trip through the mountains is not always easy and that the mountains I
love so much are obstacles for other people with less reliable means of
transportation. Certainly, this was true
in the time of Isaiah. There were no
SUV’s or even under slightly underpowered minivans to carry people through the mountains. All a person had was his or her own two feet
and maybe an animal or two to take themselves and all their belongings through
the mountains. Mountains and valleys
were huge obstacles that made both travel difficult and dangerous, as well as
taking far longer than to travel the same distance on flat land. In the
mountains, especially on foot, it is often impossible to see where you are
going until you get there. The dream that someday the glory of God will be revealed,
and all people will see God’s glory together was at best a only a dream and at
worst a cruel joke unless the obstacles were removed and the land was leveled. And who could do that but God?
Every year on the second Sunday of Advent as we
move toward our glorious celebration of the birth of Jesus, we hit an obstacle
of a different sort as we come upon John the Baptist. We are waiting for the glory of God to be
revealed on Christmas Eve, and we hear the words of Isaiah: “The voice of one
crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths
straight.” In Mark’s gospel, from which
we hear this morning, the quote does not continue and tell us that the valleys
shall be filled and the mountains made low as happens in Luke’s gospel. But we do hear “Prepare the way. Make the paths straight.” And, in order for the paths to be made
straight, the valleys must be filled and the mountains made low.
So, John the Baptist goes out into the wilderness
to prepare the way and make the paths straight.
John does two things out in the wilderness. First, John proclaims a baptism for the
repentance of sins. People from the
whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem came out into the
wilderness to be baptized by this oddly dressed, locust eating wild man. Secondly, John makes a promise to the people. “The one who is more powerful than I is
coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his
sandals. I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy
Spirit.” How does a baptism for the
repentance of sins and a promise that someone greater is coming prepare the way
and make the paths straight?
When John calls us to repent, John is causing us
to turn from the obstacles that divide us from each other and God. In 2017, those obstacles may not be literal
mountains and valleys and they may not be obstacles of our own making, although
we may be complicit in allowing the obstacles to exist. What are the obstacles that need to be overcome
so that all flesh might see the salvation of God? We know from recent months that there are all
kinds of mountains that divide us, whether mountains of racism, or sexism, or elitism,
or homophobia or any of the many other attempts to divide us from each other. Then there are our own valleys of
disappointment, hurt and frustration, or the valley of despair in which people live
when they know no good news. There is the
mountain over which people struggle simply to feed their children and the
valley of poverty out of which it is almost impossible to climb. John the Baptist calls us to identify these
obstacles and to work to eliminate them.
John the Baptist does not say this work will be
easy nor does he say there will be results overnight. But he does tell us that we cannot do this
work of removing obstacles unless we name the obstacles and commit to tear them
down, which is repentance. The Good News
is that we do not have to do this work alone.
John told those who gathered at the Jordan River that there is one who
coming after him will baptize with the Holy Spirit. The baby we await during Advent is that one,
and has sent the Holy Spirit to live within and among us so that we never work
alone. In fact, the work of Jesus’ life,
death, and resurrection was tearing down the obstacles that divide people from
each other and God so that all flesh can see the glory of God. John the Baptist calls us to nothing other
than Jesus’ work so that the glory of God can be seen and known, both when Jesus
comes wrapped in bands of cloth and placed in a manger, and always.
No comments:
Post a Comment